Abstract The production of soya is very important for the global food security, and the drying process exerts great impact on grain quality. The irregular flow of the grain in a mixed flow dryer can produce a non-uniform drying of the grains. The objectives of this work were to verify the suitability of the use of the discrete element method simulations in a quasi-two-dimensional domain, to perform experiments with the objective of validating the results found in the simulations, and to analyse the main aspects of grain flow in a mixed flow dryer. The software YADE was used in the simulations, and the results obtained by the quasi-2D simulations were similar to those obtained in the 3D case, using considerable less computational resources. The simulations of soya beans flow in MFD show that particle size does not affect the residence time, when considering the typical soya beans size variation. Simulations carried out considering different moisture content values show that residence time increases with moisture content. The results also show that porosity distribution is not uniform, which can impact airflow mathematical models.

中文翻译：

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混流式干燥机中大豆流动的准二维模拟

摘要 大豆的生产关系到全球粮食安全，干燥过程对粮食品质影响很大。混流干燥机中谷物的不规则流动会导致谷物干燥不均匀。这项工作的目的是验证在准二维域中使用离散元方法模拟的适用性，进行实验以验证模拟中发现的结果，并分析混流干燥机中的谷物流动。仿真中使用了YADE软件，准2D仿真得到的结果与3D情况下得到的结果相似，使用的计算资源要少得多。MFD 中大豆流动的模拟表明，粒径不影响停留时间，在考虑典型的大豆大小变化时。考虑不同含水量值进行的模拟表明停留时间随着含水量的增加而增加。结果还表明孔隙度分布不均匀，这会影响气流数学模型。